Party Girl

Party Girl is a 1930 American pre-Code crime film directed by Victor Halperin and starring Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Jeanette Loff, and Marie Prevost. It is also known by the alternative title of Dangerous Business, the title of the novel on which it is based. It follows a New York businessman who inadvertently becomes involved in the criminal activities of a covert escort agency. The film holds the record for the longest transfer from banned status to original release in United Kingdom history, having been rejected for cinema release in 1930, and remaining unreleased there until 2003. Plot Maude Lindsay operates the Lindsay Social Bureau, which is a covert front for a "party girl" escort agency that caters to high-class playboys attempting to close business deals. Jay Rountree, the son of a bottle manufacturer, is engaged to marry his secretary, Ellen Powell, a former party girl, whose roommate, Diana Hoster, secretly works as a party girl. Around Christmas time, Jay and his friends crash one of the girls' parties, where he meets Leeda Cather, the daughter of a formerly-prominent New York family who has gone destitute. A drunken Jay spends the night with Leeda, awaking in her room the next morning, where she exclaims that he "ruined her" the previous night. When Leeda's "mother" confronts the two in bed, Leeda claims she eloped with Jay the night before, a story which he goes along with. Leeda then suggests to Jay that the two marry that afternoon.